Wednesday, November 19, 2008

A Mammoth Project

Fourteen Church Kneelers

This is a photograph of one of fourteen needlepoint church kneelers in our church. I was approached by a couple of ladies and our pastor about 7 or 8 years ago to head up a committee to make these kneelers. At the time, I was co-owner of a needlework shop and certainly had access to supplies to accomplish this. A lot of needlepoint is either printed or painted on the canvas and these painted canvases are very expensive before you even start stitching (or even buying your thread to stitch the canvas). We bought rolls of blank canvas, needles, paint, and wool thread and started from "scratch"! After our measurements were made and configurations were done as to what we needed, we determined we needed fourteen kneelers. So we cut the blank canvas, drew the designs onto the canvas with a pencil (all fourteen!) and then hand painted the canvases in the colors we needed. Then classes were held to teach those who didn't know how to needlepoint or to refresh those who did. These classes took about a year and the remaining seven years were spent actually stitching. As it turned out, we had fourteen stitchers who finished the "race"! What a coincidence! You will see initials on each kneeler. Some kneelers were completely finished by one person, some by two, some by three and some as many as four people working on the same kneeler but we got it done! It WAS a mammoth project!! It's the biggest project I've ever been involved in. They are beautiful and enhance the sanctuary. We dedicated our work and these kneelers in May of this year and it was such a celebration for all of us who worked so diligently to finish them.